When you blog, you inevitably have to start bloghopping. Most people are probably like me though. I started bloghopping first. I was intrigued by how some people write about the most personal aspects of their lives. I think I am just a natural voyeur. Or nosy. Take your pick.
Since I started my numerous blogs though, I haven’t had much time to blog hop. Random bloghopping, especially, is now an occasional indulgence done in the middle of a sleepless night. I try to be more focused during the little bloghopping time that I do now and try to visit old friends on my blogroll. All my friends have awesome blogs so they are not included on this annoying list 
During my random blog surfing, here are some of the things that I run into that immediately drives me away or makes me not want to comeback:
Websites that take too long to load. - It’s the time we live in… we want everything fast and we want it now. If a site takes longer than a couple of minutes to load, I usually turn elsewhere. That’s why I got worried recently when my food blog started loading slow, and worst, sometimes bound up and got stuck, and the ultimate crime of all, it sometimes caused my browser to get an error and shut down! I’ve learned a few tips since then to make it load a little faster, but I’ll write about it in more detail later. If you want to fix your slow loading problem, just search the internet and you will get plenty of information on how to fix it.
Background Music. I usually try to sneak a blog hop here and there from work, so music that automatically comes on, immediately turns me off. If I’m really interested in the blog, I may take a second to find the off button. But if I just came across the blog randomly then I usually hit the ‘back’ button or the X. It’s ok to post your favorite music on your blog, just don’t make it come on automatically. It’s annoying as heck.
Bad Spelling and Grammar. I’m not perfect and I don’t claim to be. English also is my second language so I really am very tolerant, I think, than most people regarding this issue. However, when it’s blatant it makes it very hard to understand what your thoughts and it then becomes all about the mechanics. Most blogging software now have spell check at the very least. Take advantage of it and take a double look when some of your words get a red underline all of a sudden. Better yet, type in a word processing application first like Word so you can check your spelling and grammar before copying and posting it on your blog.
ALL CAPS, no caps, and one paragraph. In blogging and on the internet, when you type in ALL CAPS, it means you’re yelling and could be considered rude. I have a friend who is a bit astigmatic and used to type all her emails in capitals just because she couldn’t see. We never knew when she was upset about something or what. So we had to tell her to make her screen view bigger instead of typing in caps.
Equally annoying is when people don’t bother to capitalize at the beginning of sentences and type all in lower case. It implies that you don’t really care about what you’re saying.
Hitting the ‘enter’ key doesn’t take much effort either. Break up your paragraphs every once in a while. I found a very compelling essay one time, but it was written in one long block. I mean really loooong block. I couldn’t read it. But since I really wanted to, I copied it, pasted it in Word, broke it into paragraphs, then read it. I did that because I was interested enough in what he had to say. Normally though, when I see a huge block of text, I don’t even bother skimming it because it’s unskimmable (I know, that’s not a word. It’s ok to make up words sometimes).
MiXed CAps Maybe I should have put this with the previous section on capitalization, but after thinking about it, it thought it deserved its own section. MiXeD CaPs is cute when you’re 13 or 16. I think that people over 18 should be banned from using mixed caps even if they are still immature. It will be a step in the right direction in progressing their maturity. And horror of horrors, a blog of a thirty-something in pink, with cartoons and mixed caps is a definite turn off. For me anyway. There is something really wrong with that person more than juvenile taste.
Text Talk Texting is now the rage, and if you thought IM abbreviations were bad, it’s even worst in texting. But, that’s fine if you use them in those venues. People who read blogs, however, still like to have all the words spelled out. Emails and blog posts still need to be in long spelling and all the grammatical rules still apply.
Really long posts. Again, going back to the previous point. If you have a really long post, it better be one hell of an interesting post. If it’s just you rambling, then I probably wouldn’t stick around for long either. If the topic is interesting enough for you to do a dissertation on, then I suggest breaking it into chapter or posts and keep your readers coming back for more.
Too many Ads I won’t be a snob and say I don’t like blogs with ads. We all have to eat, especially me, so I do have ads on my site. However, there is a point when it can be too much. I don’t know exactly where that point is, but when the ads keep you from reading the article, I think that’s too much. When you have to scroll down too far to see the body of the article, that’s too far. When the flashing ads distract you from reading the article, that’s too much. AND way too much when you start getting pop up ads or an interim ad before you can even enter the site. That’s when I immediately get out of there.
Too Dark or Too Bright Colors This is a personal preference. I just don’t like dark layouts. I also don’t like layouts that are too bright it’s garish. I guess I am just conservative that way. I like plain, easy to read layouts without too many bells and whistles.
Animated Cursors Again this goes back to the juvenile impression problem. Cutesy cursors can be very annoying especially if you want your opinions to be taken seriously. They do have a place, like everything else in blogging. My daughters certainly like them. But I get annoyed as heck when I have a clock or hearts following me when I move my mouse around.
If you want to keep people on your blog and maybe even read through your recent posts and dig through your archives, it’s important to not only give them something good to read, it also helps when you make the environment that they read your content on to be easy to navigate and friendly on the eyes (and ears).
LOL!!! You hit it on the head….